Experience
- White House National Economic Council (Biden and Obama administrations)
- Federal Trade Commission
- New York Attorney General’s office
Expertise
- Competition and anti-trust
- Technology industry regulation
- First Amendment and free speech
Education
- Harvard Law School, J.D.
- McGill University, B.Sc.
Recent Coverage
MAY 23, 2024
HuffPost | The Case For Breaking Up Ticketmaster, ‘The Monopoly Of Our Time That Everybody Hates’
Tim Wu, former special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy, was speaking to a gathering of antitrust hawks at the American Economic Liberties Project’s Anti-Monopoly Summit in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. When the discussion turned to Ticketmaster and Live Nation, Wu called it “the monopoly of our time that everybody hates.”
He argued that if any modern company should be targeted for antitrust enforcement, it should be Ticketmaster-Live Nation, and that pursuing such a case was a matter of following “popular will”:
If or when the Justice Department of the United States files suit against Ticketmaster-Live Nation, that will be a happy day for the republic. I just want to point out if you ask a person in the street, they may have whatever feelings about Google or Apple, but nobody, nobody likes the Ticketmaster monopoly. And I think there’s something to that. I think that we have to be showing we’re taking people’s concerns seriously. It’s just like sitting in front of everybody’s faces that Ticketmaster Live Nation is this untouched monopoly…
Going back in history again, Theodore Roosevelt started antitrust, and he was like, ‘We have to break up Standard Oil. Like, what is this? If this law was written for something, it was written for the Standard Oil monopoly.’ And in our times, if this movement means something, it’s going to be taking on Ticketmaster, which is the monopoly of our time that everybody hates. Now, I don’t want to prejudge the case, but I guess I just did. But I do think it’s important that popular will says something.
APR 29, 2024
New York Times | When It Comes to TikTok, the World’s Democracies Have Played the Sucker for Far Too Long
If the United States refuses to enforce the principles of internet freedom and openness, it makes a mockery of them. I will be the first to admit that even the United States has at times failed to respect these principles, particularly when it comes to state surveillance. But the answer is not to throw up our hands and declare that there is nothing to be done.
APR 22, 2024
Financial Times | Power, productivity and how our system works
Wu had one interesting thought — take a page out of the book of racial activists, who’ve run well-publicised experiments looking at how resumes with “ethnic” names get buried in the slush pile, while those of more obviously white candidates will sail through HR with ease. “Maybe academics should be looking at, say, how long it takes phone calls from different stakeholders to get returned by various politicians or regulators,” suggested Wu. Great idea.
Interested in speaking with Tim Wu?
About Tim
Tim Wu is an author, policy advocate, and professor at Columbia Law School. Wu’s best known work is the development of Net Neutrality theory, but he also writes about private power, free speech, copyright, and antitrust. His books The Master Switch and The Attention Merchants have won wide recognition and awards.
Wu has worked in academia, federal and state governments. He worked at the White House for the National Economic Council; at the Federal Trade Commission, for the New York Attorney General’ as a fellow at Google, and for Riverstone Networks in the telecommunications industry. He was a law clerk for Judge Richard Posner and Justice Stephen Breyer. He graduated from McGill University (B.Sc.), and Harvard Law School.
Wu is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and was formerly a contributing writer at NewYorker.com and contributing editor at the New Republic. He has been named to the Politico 50 twice, to America’s 100 most influential lawyers, and also won awards from Scientific American magazine, National Law Journal, 02138 Magazine. He has twice won the Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing and in 2017 he was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
